Bracketing with CHDK in continuous mode

Sample HDR tonemapped image from a series of CHDK bracketed photos.

CHDK allows you to quickly and easily perform bracketing using an extra photo override. CHDK bracketed photos are perfect for making HDR (High Dynamic Range) images in your favorite photo editor. In this post I will guide you through the steps required to take bracketed photos using your Canon Powershot Camera and CHDK.

You can also use the bracketing techniques mentioned in this post to make HDR panoramas and equirectangular images for use in 3D graphics packages with the addition of HUGIN or PTGUI.

1. Open the CHDK Main Menu.

Main Menu

2. Load the Extra Photo Operations Menu.

3. Set Disable Overrides to Off.

Extra Photo Operations

4. Open the Bracketing in continuous mode menu.

5. Change the TV bracketing value from Off to something like 1 Ev.

If you want you can enable “Clear Bracket Values on Start” which will reset the bracketing settings when you restart the camera.

Bracketing in continuous mode

6. Close the CHDK Menus and exit ALT mode.

7. Switch to the Continuous Photo mode.

Continuous mode

8. Hold down the Shutter button to take your bracketed photo sequence.

Bracketing CHDK

9. If you want an automated bracketing solution you can press the self timer button on your camera and scroll down to enable the Custom Timer. Press the Menu button when the Custom Timer is selected to change the delay to 0 seconds and the shots to a value like 10. The shots setting will specify how many pictures are taken automatically when you press the shutter button once.

Using the Custom Timer

10. When you are finished taking your HDR sequence set the Self-Timer to OFF.

11. After you transfer the bracketed sequence to your computer you can process the images using your favorite HDR software. Photoshop and Hugin / Enfuse are popular tools to create HDR images.

I also want to thank you for posting all the helpful information on CHDK here on your blog. I now have my SD780 able to shoot bracketed exposures in continuous mode and to take RAW photos saved as DNG that open up directly in Lightroom and CS5.

I really like the tutorial but it doesnt seem to work for me. i have the a650is and when i get to the continuous settings, it isnt there. Is there something i am doing wrong or does my camera just not support this?

When i go out of the menu and out of alt mode
i go into the func set and there is no continuous.

Awesome tutorial… It got me going with my waterproof PowerShot D10 in minutes!! The book “The Canon Camera Hackers Manual – Berthold Daum” is also worth taking a look at, especially if you want to get into scripts.
THNX

Hi Andrew. Were you able to do a HDR timelapse ? I can do HDR with your instructions and a timelapse with the HDR timelapse script http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/UBASIC/Scripts:_HDR_time_lapse ?
However I cannot get a HDR + timelapse. The shutter press in the HDR timelapse script only gives 1 pic each time..

What Canon camera model do you have? Is your camera in continuous photo mode when you run the timelapse script? It looks like the script you linked to is designed primarily for cameras with built-in bracketing.

You might need a time-lapse script that uses two loops, one to take the burst of CHDK bracketed photos, and another to run the intervalometer delay counter.

I got this fixed in the end. Im using the SD780. I setup cont shooting, I set the custom timer delay to 0 and a shot every 10 secs. I used the standard interval script. Also, I set noise reduction to off.

Nice writeup. Even better is that you’re answering questions nearly two years later! Thanks!

I’d like to use the USB Remote to shoot continuous photos with bracketing. I’ve tried several combinations in the Remote Parameters menu settings and the Bracketing in Continuous Mode menu settings. But I can’t seem to get the right combination for my SX230.

What I’d like to do is fire off the USB Remote, and it takes a series of bracketed photos, wait, then repeat. I’ve done what you’ve suggested for Anmol, using a script with two loops, one for the bracketing, and one for the remote. But it takes each photo individually, not continuously, and that takes much longer.

My ultimate goal is to use my ardinuo-controlled tilt-pan head to do HDR panoramas. When you’re taking 300+ photos per scene, adding HDR of course triples (or more) that number. So if it takes on average 1 sec for each photo, your talking 15 minutes just in picture-taking (never mind the time for tilt-panning). So anything to improve the speed would help.